Meryl Streep: 'Walt Disney Was Sexist and Anti-Semitic'

Calls him a "gender bigot."

The Oscar-winning actress made the comments while presenting an award to Emma Thompson at the National Board of Review dinner in New York City on Tuesday (January 7).

During her ten-minute presentation speech, EW quotes Streep as having said: "Disney, who brought joy arguably to billions of people was, perhaps, or had some racist proclivities.

"He formed and supported an anti-Semitic industry lobbying group and he was certainly, on the evidence of his company's policies, a gender bigot."

She then proceeded to read a 1938 letter from Disney rejecting a female applicant to the animation trainee program.

Referring to Thompson's Disney movie Saving Mr Banks, Streep continued: "When I saw the film, I could just imagine Walt Disney's chagrin at having to cultivate PL Travers' favor for the 20 years that it took to secure the rights to her work.

"It must have killed him to encounter in a woman an equally disdainful and superior creature, a person dismissive of his own considerable gifts and prodigious output and imagination."

Streep will soon be seen in Disney's onscreen adaptation of the Broadway musical Into the Woods.